Esteemed members, I would greatly appreciate your help with a rather serious problem I am having with my Series I EZ-Trak. My nearest machine tech is a 6 hour drive away in Denver!
I did a search on the forum and found this thread, but I believe my circumstances are a bit different, possibly requiring a different approach.
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showth...=pointer+error
In a nutshell:
1.) Machine generally boots up fine. BMDC countdown to 14, parameters load, XY&Z all home like they should, all seems good.
2.) After hitting some sort of keystroke (could be anything), an error message pops up saying “Possible Pointer Error”,
immediately followed by “General Protection Fault – Fatal Error Software will try and clear error”.
I hit enter, and get one of three scenarios:
a. Screen completely freezes and goes white, requiring reboot OR
b. One of the following screens appears, and everything freezes, requiring reboot
c. Screen briefly goes to a startup screen, then goes right back to what I was doing. This may happen 2 or 3 times before finally going to 2a or 2b.
3.) Problem has not occurred while actually running a program, or just spinning the dials. Sometimes the error occurs right away after homing, sometimes the machine runs for a while (10 minutes or so) before crashing.
Machine Particulars:
3 Axis Series I EZ-Trak, c. 1998 (late DX early BPCM)
8mb Flashdisk memory (i.e. no Hard Disk Drive)
Version 6.0/5.78 software
Z axis encoder
Floppy in rear
230 Volt
Machine runs on generated 3 phase via Phaseamatic rotary phase converter. PC power supply is wired separately from motor/drives; runs directly from single phase 120v. I generally only turn on the phase converter and main switch at the back of the machine when I’m just about to cut a part
Measured line voltage to PC power supply is 123v.
Flashing green LED on BMDC card after startup. Green lights on all axis drive cards when powered up.
The following all seem to work fine: power supply fan, CPU fan, main fan
I have owned the machine for 5 years. Though it is used daily for prototype and gunsmithing work, use would be considered “light” compared to production mills. It has been relatively trouble free up to this point.
Stuff I’ve Tried/Other info:
1.) Went into CMOS to be sure “LBA” was not turned on. The setting here was “Normal”.
2.) Went into DOS via the “Utilities” screen, then “4 COMM” and tried to C:\defrag and C:\scandisk. The machine came back with “Bad command or file name”. I was later told this is N/A because I don’t have a Hard Disk Drive, but I don’t know much about this stuff.
3.) Reloaded software from my Bridgeport 6.00/5.78 floppy. This seemed to help for a while, the machine ran for 4 hours before the crashing started again. Oddly, I began to intermittently lose my Z axis DRO reading (i.e. reading did not change) when I switched from 3 axis to full manual.
4.) Tried booting direct from floppy. Machine doesn’t seem to want to do that, it only wants to load the software onto “C:” I checked in the CMOS/BIOS settings to be sure the machine would load from A first. I even removed the Flashdisk card from the motherboard to get it to boot from A. It did not want to boot at all. I put the Flashdisk back in, and I’m right back where I started.
Other:
This MAY be totally coincidental, but if memory serves, the problems seemed to begin around the time I started loading G-code as .TXT files (via floppy) that was written on my laptop PC. These files did 3 axis contouring and ran just fine. Up to that point, I had just been doing PGM files right on the EZTrak.
The same problem DID occur once or twice last summer, but just went away on its own.
CMOS battery was changed a few months ago, as I was getting “CMOS checksum errors” at startup and finally got tired of plugging in a keyboard to bypass. Didn’t really know what I was doing, just pulled the battery out and stuck a new one in of the same type.
Quick shot of the main guts, we are looking straight on at the 8mb flash card:
Well enough rambling, again I would appreciate any help, or pointers in the right direction! Many thanks for enduring to the end of this post!
Stan